


Sycamore

by framedhim



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Blasphemy, Gore, M/M, Major Character Death (canon), Mental Disorder, Thoughts of Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-17
Updated: 2014-01-17
Packaged: 2018-01-08 22:43:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1138298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/framedhim/pseuds/framedhim





	Sycamore

**Art Title:** Please Leave Only When My Eyes Are Closed  
 **Prompt Number:** 1109  
 **Artist:** containerpark  
 **Fic Title:** Sycamore  
 **Author:** framedhim  
 **Fandom/Genre:** SPN/RPF  
 **Pairing(s):** Dean/Jared, Dean/Sam  
 **Rating:** NC-17  
 **Word Count:**  
14,270 **Warnings:** mental illness, thoughts of suicide, blasphemy, major character death (canon), gore  
 **Summary:** Struggling between his waking world and the hellish mirror image in his dreams, Dean Winchester finds himself faced with a seemingly impossible choice.

 **Art Link(s):** [LJ](http://containerpark.livejournal.com/3519.html) | [tumblr](http://nonasheila.tumblr.com/post/73525024356/my-arts-for-spn-reversebang-its-jared-dean-and)

 **Fic Link(s):** [LJ](http://framedhim.livejournal.com/48628.html)

 **Author notes:** First, my thanks to the mods of [spn_reversebang](http://spn-reversebang.livejournal.com/) for hosting the challenge.

My thanks to my artist [containerpark](http://containerpark.livejournal.com/3519.html). It was my pleasure to have the opportunity to work with her as I adore the look of her art pieces, and her background idea for her work's prompt--a Full Metal Alchemist doujinshi-- _heavily_ inspired the direction I took this story.

A special hoorah to my beta, [abeautifullie3](http://abeautifullie3.livejournal.com/): you have my gratitude in spades! Late-night beta sessions and all, she helped me clarify and organize my thoughts and words—I’m beyond appreciative.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Any and all mistakes are my own.

+

Dean’s life begins, again, with the quiet study of a butterfly’s wings.

Black lined edged tips, mottled with white spots, and soft white near-to pale yellow filling of color for the rest of the wing. A tiny Clouded Sulphur, alone and vibrant enough amongst the small patch of seclusion where the boy sits that it’s instantly noticed. Its wings beat a quick tempo as it lands on a nearby butterfly bush.

Five seconds in each spot to feed, and after, it lifts, flying sporadic.

Closer.

The spring day is noon o’clock warm, sun high in the sky, and a sudden gentle breeze pushes the insect to the left of its trajectory. It steadies then flits down for another landing on a grouping of clover peeping through perfectly mowed grass. Tiny proboscis unfurled as it sips nectar, its wings fan out for the briefest of rests.

Dean watches and keeps his body stock still, inhaling deeply in order to hold his breath. His arm is frozen in the moment, outstretched hand hanging mid-air towards a floral handled spade his mom had spared from her treasured garden tools.

The image is a perfect outtake, the butterfly seemingly unaware of its captive audience and all the more visible for a mental snapshot. The boy’s lungs burn with the need to release and fill. Not wanting to startle it, he purses his lips in a great effort to not breathe. His world narrows, sounds of cars from blocks away and tiny black-cap chickadees beeping fading into background noise, muted.

He never hears it, never feels the slight give of loosened soil by his feet nor the gush of exhale, so attentive he is to the bug.

The _click_ of a camera startles Dean so bad that he chokes on his spit, bursts of stale air puffing out. His outstretched hand grabs the spade, pulling the blade portion sunk into the rich dirt, and he wheels forward—greedily inhaling and eyes blinking rapidly to focus on the intrusion.

There’s a desperate pleading sound, snapping him into the here and now. A boy, younger than himself, under him. How that happened is…?

“What the...?”

“Please, I’m sorry.” The boy beneath him may not whimper but his words are laced with fear, eyes clenched shut so that the tears welling up beneath his lids stick and smoosh the lashes together. None of it makes sense until he feels a sudden pressure around his wrist, the kid’s small hands squeezing tight but not making to push.

His grip screams to life, instant weight of the spade there. The one he’d been using to dig deep into the park’s soil, an attempt to look busy on a hunt more than a teenage creeper. Currently, the blade of his momma’s treasured tool (passed down from her mom, which was passed from her mom) is pressed into the kid’s throat, and that’s quite the conundrum as he doesn’t remember how he managed to flip and straddle the boy, much less brandish what is now a dangerous weapon.

It’s all very disturbing, too much, and the kid below him squirms like he has to pee. He carefully pulls his arm back, spade thumping as it hits the ground. His thighs are squeezing the kid’s scrawny ones tight, so he gets his Nikes under himself and pushes up to stand. Leaning over, he takes in the kid’s disheveled appearance and a pang of guilt rushes him. Dean thrusts a hand out in order to get the other boy upright. Seems the polite thing to do considering the fallout and the fact that the other kid’s body creeps him out, lying so still on the ground.

“Hey, open your eyes.” When the order—it is horrifyingly that, and he doesn’t quite know why his brain-to-mouth filter felt okay in bossing about people he may have scared half to death—flies, the kid’s eyes pop open. There’s a scared, calculated look there in startling crystal hazel, warring with a determined set to the boy’s chin. He shakes his hand a little, and this time the boy grabs. Kid upright, he wants to swipe away grass, one green blade stubbornly stuck in grown-out bangs.

The boy does it before he has a chance, “Perfect opportunity wasted,” grumbled, and the bangs are immediately swept back and off his face.

So, not one to hide. An observation tick for the night’s journal post.

“Uh, yeah. About that. Sor….Damn it.” The butterfly is gone. It’s not anywhere near where they stand, not a speck on the clover patch, not even a splash of color off near the butterfly bushes a few yards away against the park’s chain link fence.

“You owe me something to drink.” The boy scuffles forward, hands wiping away a track of dirt from starched khakis.

And like that, he’s refocused. “And you’re a runt who owes me an apology. Your mom here?.”

A stain of pink tints the boy’s—and he’s definitely much younger—cheeks. He stares off the path at a group of noisy ducks waddling their way towards a pair of siblings fighting over bread cubes. If he’s put off by the question, it doesn’t color his voice. “Nope, my mom’s got confidence. Says I’m smart enough to know what’s what and fast enough to not be lunch. Only a mile walk to the Gas-Sip, and a mile past that is my neighborhood.”

There’s a shrug, and it’s a good enough reason to not be concerned with people fingering him for meaning the kid harm. “Yeah, no vamps out this time of day. Let’s go.”

+

The stop-and-rob gas station is a local chain, family operated. They all sell the same thing, with stupid commercials showing all day and night at loud, obnoxious volumes, touting great gas prices and nachos and value soda. The overhead fluorescents flicker and hum, and an ancient metal fan by the check-out counter creaks miserably on each side turn.

The parking lot is brimming with trucks, most on a pit-stop to the town lake. Their town is quaint, old money but open to tourists willing to part with their cash. It costs to hit the water, a privilege to be fishing and skiing the mountain waters. Dean’s family owns a good chunk of lakeshore property, and then some—hunters who saved and pinched pennies and built a commune of sorts, made good with the locals. It’s a method that works remarkably well. He hasn’t asked Jared’s story, they’re too far apart in age to know one another from school and truth is considered king, gossip shunned, so all the town folk don’t dig. No need.

The trucks sag under the weight of hitched boats. There’s smaller, more efficient vehicles that zip in, some driven by single moms and others with families of four. There’s even a jalapeno green Ford Focus with an ancient biddy behind the wheel and her toy poodle yapping madly through the cracked passenger’s side window.

He’s classifying each one, casually double checking each detail because there’s always a tell—broad daylight not exactly the deterrence for biters like he’d said. Sometimes, a nest will….

“Dean.” A strong shoulder bump and an equally tight grip to the nape of his neck breaks his reverie.

He gave his name up thirty minutes ago, and already, the kid sounds it out short and soft, lazy _dee_ sound like he’s been speaking it forever.

“Jared.” His slow head turn and subsequent dead stare at the offending appendage resting on his body do nothing to quash the new boy’s actions. “We’ve known each other for less than an hour. How and why are you in my space? Again.”

Jared is illuminated by the early afternoon sunlight reflected by the chrome detail on a Chevy Suburban. The vehicle is a tank; it holds a family of six, has side-view mirrors that ought to be wings. He and Jared are sitting on the little store’s sidewalk, a few inches back from the concrete bumper of the Suburban’s parking space. The behemoth pulled in, bald father not bothering to wonder if he’d hit the boys as he jumped out the driver’s door and went inside, mumbling.

Jared tried his best to concentrate and stay still, chewing on a piece of sour gummy candy and playing chicken with Dean without a question or a sign of concern. Like that, trusting. It was idiotic of him. It was weird. It was mildly amusing and fairly impressive.

“Dean,” sarcasm colors fly out his mouth, all in a mocking huff, “I’m a good three inches away from you. My hand takes up very little space.” It’s every bit the ten year old that Jared professed to, a personality full of piss and little kid amusement. Regardless, Jared gives.

He brushes off the (clean) collar of Dean’s striped polo, bitten thumb fingernail catching on the fabric of the sleeve. The chrome reflection is too bright, so Jared stands and trips backwards on the sidewalk curb before gaining his balance. “I’m still thirsty, and the housekeeper won’t stop listening to mom’s no-sugar rule. No soda at home. Need anything? “

Jared effectively ignores any disbelieving looks—kid chugged the last root beer in under a minute, the second took about three—and carries on as if he knows what’s best for the older boy. He pulls three crumpled bills from his pant pocket. “Forget it. You look like you need a slushie; it’s kinda sad, but we’ll fix that. I’m getting cherry—mom says the red dye is a bitch on my system, whatever. Blue thunder for you right? Look like a blue kinda guy…” He’s still talking as the door swings shut, catches his butt and pushes him forward.

Dean’s never been one to turn down the chance for a free brain freeze, and he thinks it can’t hurt to try and catch up with the way in which Jared is revved to fifty and only increasing in speed.

+

“I’m sorry.” And he means it, although he’s as interested in apologizing as he is in the question: If he poked it, would it hurt something awful?

There’s a small nick on Jared’s neck, the spade’s blade pressed down hard enough to damage the boy. The indent is a triangle shape, red blooming underneath a startling, rapid-growing black and blue bruise on the kid’s sun kissed skin.

It sits dead center, not near the carotid but just as damning. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“My fault. Really wanted a photo of the butterfly you were watching. You were so still, like you’d never seen one before, so I figured it was somethin’ special. You have though, right?”

“Have?” Dean takes a second to appreciate the huge front porch their hanging out on before laughing. “Yeah, Jared, I’ve seen a butterfly before. Look, gotta go but uh, you take care. ‘Kay?”

He’s halfway down the front sidewalk, manicured lawns as far as the eye can see and a not-so-subtle neighbor peeking out behind curtains to watch him, when Jared finds his voice. “Dean!”

Jared is being attacked by a washcloth, face pinched in a set of weathered hands. An older woman, grey hair and olive complexion, _tsks_ harshly at the offending cherry red dye lining the kid’s lips and chin, scrubbing with a vengeance. Kind blue eyes find Dean’s, smiling as she looks on and releases Jared. The kid makes a break for it, ninety miles an hour down the white wooden steps and on further until he reaches Dean and near about face plants into his shoulder.

“Jared, you’re..”

“Just a kid,” the boy finishes, the tenth time doing so in all the little conversations they’ve had since the park. “Right. Come over. Here, I mean. I get bored taking the dogs for runs by myself, there’s a creek out back, great tree to veg out under and do your staring into space thing. Star Wars stuff, needs sorting. Huge box of action figures and other types of comic books which yeah, Mom says I’m spoiled but worth it, so you can help and that’s not baby-ish or dorky.”

Jared takes a deep breath, and braces himself. “Not a dork. I act a lot older when I set my mind to it. Mom’ll make dinner, and you should have yours call her and they can make sure none of us are biters or pervy or sociopathic cult leader serial killers. Something.”

Thing is, Jared’s not begging. He’s not pleading. He should definitely lay off watching the evening shock news for use of bargaining tactics, but that’s understandable. Dean does feel wrong in a manner, being older and hanging out with the kid.

No, Jared’s mainly using this odd mix of looking like he’s trying to use Jedi mind tricks along with merely spelling out the correct course of action because he thinks Dean might be an idiot. It’s pleasantly different. Doesn’t make Dean’s head hurt, eases the slight ache of the sliding mood (real monster) he’s been in for the past few months. Which is why he needs to end this bizarre acquaintance immediately, avoid hurting the innocent stranger with stars in his eyes.

A receipt is pushed into his hand, a number visible until Dean’s fingers crumple the paper. He’s ending it, right now.

“Okay, Jared. I’ll call.”

+

He does. Call, that is. Four days later. The migraine that hit him on the way home kept him down for the previous three. The migraine brought on by the stress of the afternoon amped up to a thousand thanks to the monster.

His mom had been edgy at his coming home late.

_”Dean, you can’t stay out all afternoon like that. Almost sent your father out on a search.” Baked tuna casserole sat on the stove, oregano and basil scenting the air. Her copper hair tossed wildly, scrunchie in the back barely holding the thick half-bun. She’d wheeled around, “Too many things out and about without back-up, and—oh, crap, hon, hold on. Not yet, not yet.”_

_Trashcan whipped out for him as he started to heave, didn’t even get to shut the kitchen side-door. He vomited blue. Violent neon blue, and when he looked up, tears pooling already, his mom’s own were startled wide. If the pain didn’t feel like his brain was trying to explode through his right eye, he would’ve laughed right along with her._

_“What on earth?” She’d taken a step back from wiping his cheeks to wet a paper towel and tried to hide the equally startled bout of amusement. “I’ll be damned. Score one for one-upping my traumatic scenarios, my dear. Let’s get you to your room.”_

_The house was cool, windows open, and the temperature eased the hurt nerve skitter of his skin. The migraine pressed outward, bright knife jabs of pain in his eye that radiated heat down the side of his face. No idea how he’d managed the stairs, his soft flannel sheets and comforter pulled up to cover half his head and the light in his room dimmed on the swift_ swish _of blinds closing._

_“Be in later. A few hours.” Kissed his cheek and placed a cooling strip across his forehead._

_He’d slept for five. Five dreamless hours before cracking his eyes open to see his alarm’s LED time, tumbling from bed with a lurch in his stomach. He crawled on hands and knees to right the bedroom trash can knocked over on the way down, the commotion and movement jarring his bones. Sounds in his ears quickening the sick._

_Gurgling, he cried out a name, and the monster reared up, made him curl tight into himself, chin to chest, “Dad!” His father’s hands were soothing his shoulders, one giant hand underneath his knees, the other wrapping his arms snug so that there was minimal pain when he was lifted. His dad placed him on the bed, whispering words of comfort._

_“S’okay, Dean. Gonna ride this out with you.”_

_Two days later, his bedroom door cracked open, and the pain from the hallway light sent a spike of fever heat and nausea straight down his left side. There was a shadow there, behind the looming presence that could only be Michael Winchester. His father’s shadow moved slowly, ushering in the other._

_There was only the whisper of his name against his shoulder as the bed barely dipped. A small arm curled around him, huddled into his ball of comfort. There was a nod, a delicate motion of chin up and down against his bicep. Had he been able, his fillet knife hidden under his pillow would’ve found a target when his dad fidgeted, kicking the door open too far._

_“Mr. Winchester. Quiet.”_

_Sleep swiftly claiming him, Dean dreamt of a shadowed boy, his mess of bangs in the way of seeing straight. Dreamt of a child who sits with him, begs for the last of the cereal. His dream-self gives in and lets it go. Dreamt of being rid of the monster, but in its place rests a welling frustration that bustles beneath his skin, makes his jaw ache when he tucks the boy in at night. It makes his heart swell when the boy laughs like a loon, the kid’s face in greys as they swim in murky river water._

_Dean dreamt of a boy like Jared._

_On the fourth day, he woke in terror at the sound of a distant howl._

+

He calls. Calls as soon as a second breakfast is wolfed down. Dean worked it out, and he calls with hair a wet mess and skin clean of bed-sweat and sick.

“Mom said it was you, Jared. What the heck?” Not cursing brings on a need to throttle something. “She told me your mom and dad brought you here. How you gave her a photo of a ‘really adorable butterfly’ and made a good enough case that she thinks we’re great buds.”

Jared hums across the line. “You’re a loud snorer. Figured that much pain in your brain and your heart would make you less nasally, instant wake-up stuff. Guess not. And you put out a butt ton of heat. My dad gets nasty headaches,” there’s a distant catch of metal in the background as the boy corrects himself, “sorry, migraines. He doesn’t have the manic-depression though. I looked it all up in our encyclopedias, called Dr. Murphy when Dad started getting sick. Anyway, climbing in and rubbing his arms seems to help. Helped you.”

“Jared.” What is there to say? He feels violated, raw. The kid is infuriating and intrusive. Also, unrepentant, which is weirdly all right with him. “You’re ten! I’m fourteen. I can’t hang with a ten year old. And you had no business asking about my moods.”

A phantom ache sings happily around his skull, and he’s sad enough to let it win. The food in his stomach threatens, but worse, the tears in his throat—awful feeling, too much too much too much.

There’s nothing but another long hum, nothing suggesting anger across the line. Dean wants the lifeline, so he throws the rope.

“Come over.”

+

There’s this photo that sits on the Winchester’s desk. Anna Winchester treasures it, the really adorable photo of a butterfly a reminder of how life turns on a dime. Anna’s philosophy makes Jared’s mother throw her head back, beautiful laughter booming across the dining room.

“Mom, settle yourself.”

The turkey and Thanksgiving fixings cover every square inch of the Winchester’s oak table, the one with the devil’s trap burnt into the bottom. Cranberry jam in a silver serving bowl too big a temptation, Jared scoops a big serving as his mother counters her son’s indignant squawk, “Excuse me. I thought we were all quite aware of life changing situations considering what we humans deal with on a nightly basis.”

A wink thrown between the mothers means solidarity. “True, but these two.” It’s coming, both boys know it. Jared takes it the worst. He may be a walking encyclopedia, a bundle of mirth and joy, but he’s caught in the clutches of early puberty. A groan escapes him, and he slides down, elbows on the table and face tucked in embarrassment. Dean’s used to his mother’s rare moments of gushing, and despite his own horror, faces it head-on. Anna continues, “Oh yeah, these two are caught up in each other. Perfectly paired pranksters, adorable together.”

It’s Michael’s turn to groan, followed closely by Jared’s father as they stomp up the basement stairs. “Boys, what’d you do to start this again?”

Dean takes issue, and he playfully turns in his seat, silver fork stabbing forward in one hand and a biscuit and a half tucked away in his cheeks. No one understands the sputtered cursing, better for it or he’d be cleaning the bathrooms for months, so the parents look in unison to Jared to decipher.

“Are you kidding me? I don’t speak Dean.” There’s feigned incredulousness, Anna leaving her chair as she swallows her (holy) water before choking on it. Jared’s father softly snorts in his agreement while his mother is already up to help ensure Anna doesn’t burn Dean’s dutch apple pie. Jared’s, “Whatever,” is spoken harshly to his mashed potatoes. He kicks Dean’s sneaker, legs already reaching long for his age. “I’m twelve, everyone can back off.”

+

Dean is strong. He has these pitfalls, sicknesses, but the in-betweens show him to be remarkably self-sufficient. People are proud of him: his family, friends, Jared. What he loves is that he’s proud of himself, for beating all that shit and learning to accept help—coming out the other side stronger.

It’s different after that, the dreams of this other boy. The power of faith he has in himself helps to keep the tinted world at bay. The talks he has there, the hunts, the monsters—the beasts are numerous and different, in a sinister fashion he’s unaccustomed.

When mania sets in though, Dean doesn’t dream at all.

The mania puts his mind in overdrive, can accomplish anything, climb all the hurdles alone. Why his support system doesn’t see that, well. They’re in his way, stymie his creativity. But then, there’s his best friend.

Jared at fourteen is a precarious balance of need and comfort. Turns out, he knows how to channel it for good.

“Forget it, we’re skipping the _Dune_. Your procrastination has reached epic proportions. You need to write your essay for Stanford. Do that, bells and whistles, and I’ll have you join me for some _Killer Clowns from Outer Space_. Plus,” Jared slams his hands down on his thighs, pinches and straightens the denim, nervous, “I have a thing to show you after.”

Dean’s bouncing off the walls, in his own way, and Jared’s sudden reservation adds fuel to his fire. “Oh really, a _thing_. You go around telling all the boys you have a-”

“Jesus!” Jared puffs a breath out quick, fists his hands and pounds his thighs before he jumps off the barstool he’s perched on. “Stop waggling your eyebrows,” he affects a ridiculously awful French accent, “unless you plan on making zee eyes with me.”

“No, oh god. Stop the insanity.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“That was awful. I know bad humor, and my god, man. That was…you owe me pie.”

“Fuck, I’m so sorry.” Jared is beet red, throws a legal pad at him. “Gotta—the bathroom.”

Dean waits until Jared’s down the hall. “You find your dignity in there…” and cracks up at the door slamming, and a muttered, “ _Fuck me_.”

Dean waits a second and grabs a pen, clicks it like fast and furious, and mutters a, “Jailbait, what the hell am I doing?” before putting pen to paper.

The coffee pot is off limits, donuts are forbidden.

Jared talks him down to two essays after Dean coasts through a third in record time and is threatening a fourth. They celebrate by punching the crap out of one another for the one decent, non-sunken cushion of the couch—Jared’s connecting fist getting a bit more troubling and it makes Dean proud—and by watching horror.

It’s munching on microwaved movie-theater popcorn and sipping snagged (stolen, his dad’s going to skin his hide) beers. When the movie is over, Dean throws their junk food away and point-blank demands Jared’s elusive new shiny.

Jared doesn’t mind the no-tact-whatsoever, although Dean has a flash of someone else. It unsettles him. Jared’s not laughing anymore, his face uncharacteristically (for him, not the other boy) closed. “No laughing, okay?”

Dean feigns heartbreak. One, he needs to hide the gnawing sense of discomfort in the pit of his stomach, and two, he needs to let Jared know it’s them.

Just Dean and Jared.

Dean’s not going to do or say anything, if he can help it, that’ll mock Jared’s passions. He pokes at a blue plastic folder, thick girth impressive. Dean has a pretty good idea it’s writing, one of the _things_ Jared does not joke about. “Jared?”

Jared runs his hands through his hair, stubborn chin set and quirks an eyebrow at the work on the side table.

+

Dean opens Jared's folder and spends the next week pouring over his life through Jared’s eyes.

_Sycamore_

It’s an autobiography. It’s—everything.

Their initial meeting, how utterly engrossed they’ve become in one another’s world. What Dean’s struggles have inspired in him. It’s the hope of a young teenager, with a dash of Dean’s slightly older influence.

It’s humbling and utterly intimate so that when he finishes, Dean puts down his beer and runs. Loses the beer, his stomach inside out. His eyes ache, red capillaries visible when he finishes splashing water on his face and looks at his reflection in the mirror.

The work stays on his bedside table, he told Jared— _you lied to him, never would’ve done that before_ —he wasn’t done. “Yeah, short stack. It’s good. Just a few more days.”

It’s a goddamned script. Or the makings of a pilot, the words robust with descriptions that are never purple prose but the right side of perfect, and on the second read he cries. The third he bangs his head into the porch railing, early morning light a pinkish hue, same color as the bloody dribble of snot flowing from his nose.

The fourth read—Dean puts Jared’s words down and knows it’s the perfect fucking love story. Everything is picture perfect. Pretty world spent at the side of a pretty boy, Jared exuberant and in love with Dean.

A future stunning pair the story makes them out to be, Jared’s twenty to Dean’s twenty-four. Words describe half the reason Dean’s been pinching pennies since he was fourteen, them sailing off the coast of California. Jared fishing under a baking sun, bronzed and mammoth-sized by the time he’s grown into himself, while Dean grills the catch up with onions and lemon to the tunes of Motorhead and Quiet Riot.

This older vision of Jared—ocean spray mixed with sweat—looms over Dean in the late evening, blocking out all the world for him and opening him up on three fingers (Jared’s written all of it, excruciating detail, and Dean panicked at that point, head between his knees _boy oh boy_ , and figures the man his boy sees himself as is a ballsy top). Jared, fucking Dean in sync with the rocking boat, pounding into him under the stars.

It’s a glimpse of Stanford life mixed in with all of Dean’s paranormal research, and a home base described in exactly the setting that Dean and Jared’s tastes would match.

It’s spot on.

+

“Impressive work, Jared. A million questions, rethought each sentence.”

“Step one, Dean.” There’s a bark in the background, closer and closer until Jared’s laughing. Sunshine across the damn phone. Dean wants to kick his own ass for thinking what he does at times.

“Right, yeah. Step one. First, those things that we can’t do right now. I’m not emotionally dead, but-”

“No. No, that’s not what I expect. Not now. You love me. You want my body. Moving on.”

Dean smiles at the voice across the phone, ignores how his insides are thinned and ready to snap, smiles at Jared’s unwavering assurance. “Right. Moving on.”

+

Dean laves his praise and elevates Jared because the boy—the boy floors him. Dean works-out to forget his muddled emotions. Utilizes the gym treadmill and stationary bike until his calves hurt so bad he can barely move the next day, works-out and slams backwards against the gym shower’s blue tiled wall, name stuck in his throat.

There’s a different boy’s name on the tip of his tongue, someone who crept in under the cover of sleep and misery and won’t release his grip.

+

College begins, and soon he celebrates another birthday. The first without Jared tucked into his side since that day in the park.

He collapses under the fire of Jim Beam thrumming in his veins, barfly pink lipgloss smears on his hips and dick.

Sleep takes him as he talks to the salt line crusting his bedroom window sill about it not being from a barfly’s lips. She’d given the tube and the guys dared him. Dean would’ve painted his balls pink too, but the guy next to him at the urinal asked if it was flavored. And if so, could he taste.

The salt line sounds like a boy he doesn’t know, tells him he better watch out for the next prank war if that’s how it’s going down.

In his dreams, he wrestles a mystery woman to the ground, normal human teeth gnashing as she lurches up at him. His hands squeeze until her tongue sags and he beats her face in, cheekbone fragments dust on his knuckles. Looks to the cliffs in the distance, falls back on his ass and renders meat from the corpse. Throws chunks at the water, grizzle and tendons stuck under his fingernails.

A bloody hand on his arm quiets him, a child’s. A teenagers. A grown man in grief, flames licking in his eyes.

He wakes with a question in his throat, seeks the protection (the way out) in the grip of the pistol he has hidden beneath his pillow.

The mania gives and cracks, his reflection in the mirror blurs. It lasts mere seconds, gives, and in sweeps the dark.

+

He’s nineteen, lying in Jared’s backyard, belly itching from the press of grass beneath him. Dean allows the summer sun to freckle his back to high heaven. A blue tick hound lopes through the backyard, long ears flapping as it madly chases his best friend.

There were cheeseburgers and a movie last night. Work until noon, both of them an hour at the gym—where his hair was threatened with his mother’s scrunchie.

“Damn, pretty boy. Getting long, yeah? Not sure how I feel about this shit.” Jared’s mouth is officially worse than a sailor’s. Loud, crass, bizarrely educated curses and quotes that make Dean pink up with frustration.

“You’re fucking smart, Dean,” and “Why the hell you didn’t try out for debate, you would’ve fucking killed it,” and “How the _fuck_ am I doing this without you.”

New semester coming up, living away from the kid and the town, a place full of new monsters to study and kill. It’s all stupid important huge, but at the moment, the gross assault by slobber keeps him from dwelling.

Jared runs by with the basketball, small court and hoop off to Dean’s side, and pats the dog’s hindquarters twice to get it away from Dean’s face. “Fresh college boy meat, bam!.” Sweat flies in every direction as he sprints forward, dribbles, and slam-dunks.

“I’d take offense, but avoiding three kinds of plague thanks to your mutt’s tongue sorta won out. This diva needs his beauty rest, short stack.” He burrows a cheek into the space between his arm and elbow, lets the sun take him down. Naps content with the knowledge that Jared has his back.

Turned on that Jared has his back.

It’s not the first time he’s hard under Jared’s attention, won’t be the last.

Dean grinds forward uncomfortably, takes the edge off. Fades down into sleep.

+

She’s there, in the dreams on the lawn. So goddamned pretty.

There’s a car in the driveway, something old he recognizes from posters in the garage. Dean’s dad talks about the old school mopar beasts—vintage wheels that would make any sane person wet. Loud engine, bench seat vibrating under your ass. Dean isn’t a saint, but he won’t even think about what it does to his father or any of the old, crusty s.o.bs his dad drinks with because he’d rather endure Hell, thanks.

Jared’s at home, buried in a book about two planets that crashed eons ago and the subsequent rise of the bacteria and amoeba and life forms that crawled from the muck. Dean can see him, in his dream self’s mind, curled beneath blankets and his feet toasty in two layers of black and grey socks.

Flannel shirt and a tee with a hole in it hang off the kid’s doorknob. There’s a bright red welt across his cheek along with ugly yellow-bruised eyelids, the boy beaten and sore. Trying to get comfortable, he wiggles further under the thrift-store blankets. Rough cotton fabric that irritates the teenager’s stitches; it makes Dean aggressive.

The mystery woman is there, on the lawn, and he wants to ring her fucking neck because she’s responsible. Somehow, his boy is damaged and she’s the reason.

He can see this version, this ragged Jared, underneath him, floral-handled spade to the boy’s throat. The digging never stops, Jared’s mouth an open wound, scum of rust coating his tongue and blood dripping down his chin as he makes to plead.

She’s there, curious and curiouser. Tilts her head as Dean rears back to pull the blade free.

“Oh, god. Jared, please—I didn’t know. If I had…” The idea is there, what he’s done, but it’s a sunken scar. Too deep to dredge up and stare him in the face. Too deep to make it stop, to stop what he does in his dreams now, what he never tells Jared.

He has to staunch the flow of blood, the triangular (cut) indent so deep it severs muscle, cuts through the boy’s esophagus and airway. She licks her lips, the sleek gloss shine of fire orange red as he picks the boy up, large body bigger than Jared has ever been, and cradles him in his slippery, crimson hands.

“Wake up, Jared. I didn’t know.”

Lightening streaks across the sky, drops of rain washing away the blood.

“ _Somebody help us!_ ”

+

The town appreciates it, the way in which Anna and Michael Winchester hold training days. High school kids flood in on the days they allow Dean, home during the summer or on weekend breaks, to teach hand to hand. Teaching involves dead man’s blood administration and how to properly make a cure for transformations so that the concoction doesn’t immediately destroy the victim’s liver.

Jared is a true constant, spends the first two days on the Winchester’s couch. He’s there in the morning, pisses while Dean’s lathering up in the shower, brushing his teeth, or even sidling up beside him and crossing streams.

Jared is stubborn. When he fails, when he doesn’t get what he wants, it rarely ends with a fizzle. An explosion—Jared is intimidating, post-puberty voice dipping in anger until, as Dean says, it makes a dude’s balls draw up and hide.

It’s commendable the way Jared owns it all. When Dean employs his famous pushing too far banter, Jared claims the manner in which he handles his temper.

So when they fight, it’s no surprise to anyone that they do so with gusto. There are loud slams of doors and phones thrown against the walls, terse words, and once, a month of no talking at all. Jared’s father had put a stop to the last, threatened to take them both out on his johnboat and drown them if they didn’t shape up. “World isn’t big enough for the two of you as is, much less the two of you snapping at each other’s throats.”

The current fight is over Jared saying he’s old enough to share a bed. Dean says eighteen-the-fuck-ever and they’ll settle it like honest men—on the baseball field.

“The couch is ten years old, smells like corn chips, and hurts my back.”

“Then go home.”

“If it’s that you wet the bed, old man, we can get you diapers. No shame. But we’re sharing.”

“Jared, shut your dirty mouth,” the hiss erupting is almost as embarrassing as Jared’s words. “Your skill in not listening is becoming a serious disability concern.”

“I’m sleeping in the bed. Tonight. With you, Dean.” Jared’s voice is dead calm, his poker face a thing of beauty.

He lets it go. Lets the worry go because Jared is old enough and his parents let the boy climb on in when he was freaking ten so who the hell cares. Not Dean.

“Bitch.”

Jared catches the fast pitch Dean lobs, ball slamming into his well-worn leather mitt. “What the fuck did you call me?”

Dean loosens his pitching arm in a circle, flexes his hand, and jumps up and down on the pitcher’s mound. He crows, “Bitch!” Happy sensation at the word filling him as it carries across the field, no way Jared didn’t hear.

“Little louder, asshole, I don’t think the toddlers on the playground heard you.” Jared rises to his full height, which would be impressive (he’s six feet four of solid pissed off) except for the cocked hip, leather glove placed there just so.

Jared’s been touchy for an entire week even with Dean home, and this doesn’t help. At all. His mood’s been on the brink of angry banshee for so long, the kids at school are worried.

There was a spirit card, “Smile, babe. We love you xoxoxo,” from the cheerleaders, and two of his drama class friends bought him a Starbucks gift card. When the backpack full of baseball gear flew down the stairs, without Jared attached, Dean had an instant heads-up on the situation. He’s been downswing free for two months, the California sun and new meds doing wonders. He’s got this.

Only, he doesn’t. Because when Dean gets grumpy, he fucks it out. Rather, his masturbatory techniques are a thing of legend by now. He gets it up, his meds low enough a dose to not cause problems. He’s had the opportunity, the make-outs, but he’s always stopped shy. He’s waited his entire life, according to his dick and hind brain. Waited on something, someone, which isn’t an idea that he remembers ever consciously voting on.

The school’s baseball field is an awfully odd place to glean information, get on with throwing patience out the window, which hopefully, won’t exacerbate Jared’s foul mood. Which…

“Are you drifting off right in the middle of me correcting your sorry ass?”

This might actually be the start of a physical fight. Jared’s tone increased in volume and could’ve peeled paint. It is not, in fact, conducive to his last few thoughts and plan of action.

“Dean, why did you call me a bitch? I despise when you do that. Your attitude is utter bullshit; we talked about this the last hundred times. Not cute, no matter how precious you think my sassy ass is.” Finger quotes emphasize the word ‘sassy’ as Jared overcompensates and his manly walk because a stomping thing. It’s not funny; if it was, possibly, and Dean laughed, Dean would probably have every last tooth knocked out his head.

Dean didn’t train a slacker. He watches and listens, his best friend still muttering profanities. A middle finger emphasizes an irate, “Fucker.”

Dean lets him go, lets him have his moment because one, he’s not going anywhere in the vicinity of a car Jared is in until the kid cools down, and two, there’s a twinge of guilt.

Jared is gay. Bi to be exact, and the words ‘bitch’ and ‘flamboyant’ and ‘sassy’ used against him in summer travels—family picnics with less than tolerant fourth cousins three times removed, and Dean’s innocent jabs (they’re important, can’t let them go)—have forged big impacts on the overgrown teenager he is at present.

The temper is one of them, and the other is obvious in the way his cargo shorts sit low on narrow hips, sweat trickling down insanely sculpted chest and abs. Jared works out with a fury, determined to stay healthy and larger than life, says they need each other’s backs and refuses to let four years of adult growth in muscle and stature get in his way. Dean begs to differ, and is a little dubious of how filled out his best friend will be as he ages. Dubious and eager.

Dust kicks up, and Dean wanders over to the freshly painted dug-out to pick-up the baseball hiding in a clump of weeds; he tosses it hard into his own gloved hand. Back and forth, the hard _thud_ of impact calming his nerves.

+

Migraines come more often, last up to a week now. The new doctors, head neurologist and the training elite at Stanford U’s Medical Center, scan and analyze. His brain’s a thing of beauty. There’s a chemistry issue, serotonin, a challenge for the one psychiatrist on his case. Nothing that can’t be tweaked and fine-tuned.

There’s a relapse partway through his senior second semester, a downswing and state of depression that hits him so hard his father flies out. Panicked. He lets himself into Dean’s condo (he and Anna refuse to let him want for anything, appeasing), climbs in bed, and wedges himself behind his son so that he can prop against the headboard, pulling Dean to a sitting position. That first day, Michael doesn’t try to feed him or get him to shower, simply holds his boy close to his chest, face buried in his son’s shorn brown hair and waits until the sobbing stops.

He touches Dean more than he has in years, soft engineer hands that rub down his child’s face.

Michael questions on the second day, over a bowl of generic Fruit Loops. Pours them both cup after cup of coffee, and spins a dime across the sleek dinette tabletop. Looking at Dean’s school schedule, he scans the massive amount of labwork, designs and courses. Of course Dean would ignore taking it slow, a huge interest in finishing his degree right on time, despite everyone’s advice.

Biomechanical engineering degree in sight. The stress of his coursework is the cause of the relapse, and gradually Michael introduces an improved organized schedule with time off slots as well as double the therapy sessions.

+

The dream centers around a tree. A true powerhouse of nature similar to the one in Jared’s backyard. Ficus Sycomorus, a fig that thrives in the heat. Shades of leaves and a trunk split into two massive giants. Old and sturdy.

There’s a road, hard-packed sand and dirt on which Jared stands. Over the years, of Jared holding Dean’s head and hands and body when he was so sick he couldn’t physically function as a normal human should, the shadow dream Jared dissipated. Dean can see notJared now, in bright hues against a crisp autumn sky.

The world narrows, black tunnel vision down to the younger man that’s in his path. Dean knows him, an instant flood of nostalgia sensation at the touch of his hands, searching. There’s hazel there, everything physically the same—identical.

He’s more.

The dreamworld greys, and notJared touches his face, calls out.

Screaming, pinching his cheeks, the words silent. There’s no noise here, not the chirping of birds or the shush of the wind and certainly not the frantic yells of the stranger before him. His mouth moves; Dean tries to read his lips, but the world squeezes in like a bubble. The sides dip, and the air distorts, pressure that makes him grab his head and palm at his eyes.

He rubs at the ache, feels the world dip again, and blacks out.

+

They still fight, and play, and debate more than ever.

A master’s degree is in his sights as soon as his degree is hot in his hands, the global software company courting him, located right in Palo Alto, offering to pay. They encourage, and Dean toasts to the corporate scouts over steak and grilled asparagus, glasses of vintage white in a pristine five-star restaurant. He loses puzzle pieces of himself everyday, despite the California life agreeing with him. He assures Jared at a local yogurt parlor—Jared’s nose tipped in vanilla dessert and mouth full of dairy and skittles and gummis—assures him they’re bare bones basics.

The spots of matter between them fill, the last two visits tense with something new. Jared had leaned in, caught Dean’s lips. Dean may have had a plan, but Jared is the one to see it through. They chow down on pizza and agree on Jared never catching that flight back. “Do you have the script to shop? I have a bed. We can share.” Cocky smirk, lit blood.

“You think?”

“I think, yes. Yes, Jared. I want to kiss you.”

Jared does, kisses him, doesn’t break contact with a plump lower lip held between his teeth, so careful as he kneels down in the space between the couch and coffee table. He relinquishes control and sits back on his heels.

“Have plans or somethin’ down there?” Dean resists fidgeting, unsure but denying it in the challenge of a slight jerk of his chin. Jared grabs Dean’s face with both hands splayed wide and pulls him forward. Kisses him breathless, rubs their lips together then presses stupid, soft kisses across Dean’s nose and lids and scruff.

Kisses that are toe-curling, gestures that mean cherished and adored. It hurts in ways he didn’t expect and for the briefest second, he sees another man in the face of his best friend.

“What?” The noise in the room filters in.

“I said, ‘Come back to me, Dean.’ I want you here, not off to wherever it is you go. We’ll take it slow, nothing but this,” Jared slides open palms down Dean’s face to his neck, his thumbs out to press the path. He rubs at tiny knots along the base of his neck, thumbs kneading hard beneath the pale yellow logo tee Dean wears. “What do you think?”

Dean swallows and frown lines form between his eyebrows. But he’s happy, whispers, “I think you’re under my skin, Jared.” A waft of oregano and basil hits them, and Dean pushes the younger man back, grabs Jared by the collar of his pink polo and twists it in his grip.

Now or never, there’s a storm coming. Dean’s reflection is fleeting and he needs this. Jared is going to need this.

They make it to the one bedroom of the condo, feet chilled on the cool flooring. Cocoa brown wood, cream walls, stripes of lavender, Dean memorizes each bit as Jared crowds him against the bed and pushes. Jared whips off his shirt and holds it loose in his fingertips.

“You say stop if anything I do-”

“Wasn’t planning on it. Not a game of gay chicken, Jared. Want this.” He stands, sucks his lips in then smiles. “Go on, make me proud.”

Jared’s long fingers tug at his belt buckle, lets his jeans pool at his feet and toes them off to the side. The room wheels on Dean as he’s spun around, Jared reaching around and holding him, palms flat on Dean’s chest, pulling him back into him. Fingertips at play, he plucks at Dean’s tee, slides his palms straight down to stop at the hem.

“Raise ‘em.” Tee off, Dean feels exposed, raw under Jared’s exploration. “Waited so long,” and Dean nods, head back on Jared’s shoulder. His back arches, fingertips scraping and pinching his nipples—Dean’s sensitive, and he has to control the urge to lash out.

“Too much?” Jared grabs him by the nape in one hand, pivots them face to face then slams them back so Dean’s ass hits the wall. He backs up, gives Dean room to do what he wants him to. Places the older man’s hands on his hips, keeps his own covering them. “You want it, you take ‘em off.”

It’s molasses slow, the way Dean manages to peel the boxers down. He’s fascinated, seen Jared a thousand times but never wet, never so hard the length of him springs free and slaps his belly. One finger tips Dean’s head back, column of throat stretched. “Stay,” he whispers, and he lets go to rid Dean of his own boxers, swats when they’re out of reach and hanging to Dean’s thighs because Jared’s busy kissing a line up his throat.

“Gonna,” and Dean touches him, nerves live-wire as he feels and traces each muscle, feels down the knobs of Jared’s spine, and grabs firm asscheeks and yanks him in. The friction of their dicks lining up turns up a million times when they rut in together, and Dean’s honestly going to die if the last moan was his.

He sounds devastated. He’s never using his own hand ever again. "Ever."

Jared’s brain isn’t online, a pool of goo, responding, “What?” before he tells his best friend (dirty rut forward so he leaks all over Dean’s abs and dick), “Have to open you up, gonna fuck you until you squeak those pretty boy noises.”

Jared steps back, one step and three more until he’s by the bedroom dresser. “You just have no idea do you.” The words are choked, Jared standing there, taking in his fill of Dean pressed against the wall, knees shaking as his dick strains forward.

Dean wants to preen under the attention. Not shy at all in the way he’d imagined this scenario, wants Jared to crawl over and suck him down, open him up on his tongue. Doesn’t realize he’s said exactly that, until Jared slams the dresser drawer, eyes narrowed.

“Crawling is doable, and rimming, Dean? We can work with that, goddamn, man.”

True to his word he drops, doesn’t bother with being coy and barrels forward until he’s on his knees, kneeling in front of Dean. Licks a stripe up the length of him and mouths what he can, holding Dean up by his ass because the man’s knees buckled.

“Oh, fuck you…You wait, it’s…” 

A hand in Jared’s hair is warning enough for him to pull off, figure out that he likes the rubbed sensation across his lips but not the salty bitterness so much. Misses the surprising weight of Dean in his mouth, so he makes Dean grunt in near pain when he sinks his mouth down once more before pulling off, dick smacking him in the face as he does.

“What you get, stunt like that.” Jared should expect it, but he still snorts as Dean grabs the base and taps Jared's cheeks, nose, lips. Dean’s voice deep and dirty, “Just like that, yeah,” and he expects the slow drag Dean makes with his tip across Jared’s lower lip.

“You don’t wet up like I do. That’s a good thing if I’m gonna spend all my time sucking your dick.”

“Jared, you can’t say shit like that.” Dean circles and squeezes the base, fends off the orgasm that’s sitting heavy in his nuts. He moves, right leg parted, and feels off-balance as he realizes Jared is sliding between, throwing his right leg over his shoulder. Dean looks down the front of himself, holding himself steady with hands in Jared’s hair. “Like that, steady,” he hears Jared mumble, and there’s no steady in the world.

Jared’s mouth slurps, gentle tug as he sucks and rolls Dean’s nuts in the warmth of his mouth, the tip of his tongue swirling. Each one, individual laves until Dean’s hands push him back, needing friction somewhere, something. Jared’s smirk is against his taint, wiggle of his tongue licking a stripe further back until Dean feels the warmth of it against his opening.

“Kiss, but use your fingers. Please, I don’t…please.”

Cool gel replaces the scorching, heated breath, and Jared opens him up. One finger takes a lifetime, Dean backing out at the initial pain. Two, three, stretched until the furl of him is pliant on each stroke. Dean is vocal, “Burns like a bitch, _damn_ ,” but he rocks into it, hips stuttering when the pads of Jared’s fingers hit him where it counts. It's better when Jared keeps his fingers buried, teasing that spot every fourth pass, and moves out of the vee of Dean’s bowlegs so he can mouth and suck him down again.

“Prepped, baby?” Dean’s balls are fully on board with _that_ word coming out of Jared’s mouth, entirely counter-intuitive to his brain. His brain hates the endearment, but it isn’t going to win this in the long run.

“Don’t call me baby, not …messed up.” He’s squirming in Jared’s hands, back arching and then pressing flat against the wall, teeth grinding with the need to have Jared fully in his hands, inside.

“Stubborn. Swear to Christ, Dean. Love it all, man.” He stands and shoves Dean back, inhales sharp and deep when it makes his best friend give a full body shudder. “Don’t you dare cum,” spit out at the lowest octave.

Dean grabs, kisses and bites at him even as he turns and braces against the wall. “Ready,” and “Now,” and “No fucking way,“ as he grunts at the intrusion, Jared a statue behind and in him. _In him_ , and Dean spreads his thighs apart, tilts his ass up as he bends over at the waist. Out and back. The stretch opens him, and Jared sinks in another inch, not breathing.

“Breathe, Jared. Breathe and make this better.” By the time Jared pushes in, balls to ass, they’re a mess of sweat and lube, Dean’s rosy red, yielding, tipped. He gets off on it, is what it is. Gets off on this, this fullness, of being filled, and starts rocking.

Keeps on, as Jared starts tiny thrusts and more and soon, the slap of skin. Hysterics bubble up in his throat, pressure he doesn’t think he can take, “Jared, now.” and cums with the man’s hand wrapped tight around his dick, splatters the floor when Jared shoves in and stays.

Stands on his toes when Jared’s hands grip his hips and yanks him twice more, deep and, “Too deep, no no no…” He’s out of his mind, getting off on the jerk of the weight inside him, subtle warmth when Jared releases inside him. It makes him antsy, orgasm high settled in his bones, and he wants to jack off to the pain and stretched feeling of Jared pulling out slow, rolling his sensitive tip right inside his rim. If he could, he would. But everything aches and his dick hangs limp and that’s a good thing.

+

Jared cleans him up in the shower, goes down on him in curiosity and doesn’t eat his cum out because, “I’m not there yet, maybe we’ll work up to it.” Shy boy staring up from between Dean’s legs, he grabs the shower gel and lathers up a mesh cloth. Scrubs because the devotion towards his boy is too much. He has to let it go.

He fingers himself open an hour before Jared’s internal alarm clock wakes him, like every morning before. Figures out the best way to lift his legs, scoot forward with his ass back. Grinds until Jared’s hard and sinks down and back, sigh out of his mouth. Begs until Jared fucks the shy right out of both them.

Falls asleep squirming—leaking—not knowing if he likes the sensation, yet too tired to move.

Falls asleep knowing notJared will be there waiting, guns ready, and he needs Dean. Can give Dean everything Jared has and more if he’d just wake up.

“Wake up, Dean!”

+

Eyes wide open, heart hammering as a cheap motel door slams and a bright light illuminates the world outside. His ears pop and bleed, but the pressure in his head never intensifies to snake behind his eyes.

+

A massive amount of time has passed.

Coming to, groggy and wounded, breath leaves his lips in harsh, hot puffs. Eyes gritty with desert sand kicking up from the east. A ton of time is wasted, so much blood and pain that bloomed sharp and lasted for eons, devastated someone that he’d left behind.

A century passes by as fast as the flap of a butterfly’s wings. Thoughts of aching and bone dry lips waking him on the decades. Each tick of an unknown time brings him around, old memory of what tore into him, why he’s not beside someone important.

His voice is silent when he screams a name, parched flesh of throat, doesn’t recognize it in the shrouded clouds of his mind’s eye.

One more decade down, and rain pelts the void. Blistering cold drops fall, and he imagines himself sizzling. Only, the liquid catches, soaks in. His throat unlocks, flesh splitting apart to channel air—blood and gore lubricating the way into his gullet .

He lets slip the name of the person he’d left that century ago. The _not_ he’d left behind, boy screaming in horror, watching helpless as the hounds tore into flesh. Liquid heat spilling from his chest, tributary flowing into his ripped navel, and clogging his throat. All while listening to the lilting laugh of a blonde who was the demon mother herself—Lilith, there with Sam.

Sam. The word hits the instant his memories solidify.

“ _Sam!_ ”

He doesn’t remember his own name, but he remembers who was left behind.

He’s somewhere, the possibility of the pit rings through his head.

Here is kerosene heaters, campfires built too large, bonfires that rage a mile upward, searing heat of all them combined. Sweat trickles down his face, stings his eyes, collects on his upper lip. His back is wet with it, stings his knitted chest.

Taste, feeling—his senses work harder, and he startles at the rumble from above and in the distance as his ears pop. The pluck of guitar strings, air pressure released. The heat around him intensifies, a second question forming: why he wanted his senses back. Blinking, he tries to clear his eyes from the endless perspiration.

What he sees is ridiculous. With effort, he clears his throat to protest the image.

There are two giant screens situated a football field’s length ahead of him—stadium-sized behemoths hung from rafters with seemingly no foundation, no steel columns to support them. As if the sky regurgitated the steel and concrete, the twisted wire, and screen fabric—unfurled them all for his personal outdoor theater benefit.

The massive screen rig is steady and unyielding; the structure doesn’t sway despite the wind he feels rub past him, poker hot. Sound sings through the structure’s beams and girders whistle, the racket intensifying as it gathers speed down into the valley.

Heated air envelops him; air hot enough to scorch the tiny flyaway hairs around his temple, his eyelashes. He squirms, restraints calling his attention. He’s tied, back scraped raw, flush against something huge, solid. Outstretched muscles taut and aching as he realizes each wrist is bound to low hanging branches.

It’s the fig sycamore, distant journal memory as he looks at squashed fruit littering the ground. Branches that jut out in all directions hang inches off the ground and soar high above him to form a shady canopy.

His chest is stained garnet and everything is fuzzy, pain registering along imagined nerves, hooks and pins tapped into non-existent skin. There’s no actual flesh, no bone and sinew. Mental images, ghost limbs, his mind’s eye is awake and remembers. Knows the knitted weave of each vein, the tendons and ligaments that connect. Strong skeletal muscle that’s no longer torn and ripped by the hounds— _by the rack?_ —his mind offers. His being is alive and well inside a thought.

If Dean’s off the rack then someone should hear. Someone would know to find him in the wastelands of Hell.

“Sam!”

“Would you can it? All this, ‘Saammm,’ desperation is bad for my pores.”

Accessory lights on the girders move lazily until they face the valley, giant spotlights illuminating the woman in shadows as the sun suddenly blinks out, end scene. Nighttime darkness blankets the world, stars visible through the tree’s canopy. For all the serene blanket of dark—the hint of cooler air without the sun’s warmth—the air still burns, dries his lungs and singes the open wound of his throat.

The woman isn’t djinn, no markings and the djinn wouldn’t be in hell, he doesn’t think. Knows his name, can recall what the red glow to her eyes means. She travels a pointed nail up his side, his illusion of skin twitching in response. Her hair is black, toffee-colored cheeks high, lips glossed and pouty. For all her sideways glancing on up the valley, gaze caught on silver flashes that blast across the screen, the crossroads demon makes it known through touch that she is very much aware of the illusion of Dean.

“You’re not an illusion. And no, I can’t read your mind. Pity that, only I’d have to endure all your sickly-sweet brother yearning. Nothing but a pathetic husk of a soul, but you’re definitely not an illusion. Not in Hell, either. That idea is laughable…this is a day at the Met with sugary cupcakes and unicorns compared to the Pit.”

Silently, images jump on the screen: a child’s feet running through the forest, soles dirty and kicking up leafy debris; tiny amoeba in murky water, a camera zoom out as the same child floats past the billions of microbes; a green Dutch barn with the American flag painted on the exterior, zoom in on a big front-toothed, goofy smile, and zoom out as a head of shaggy brown hair rests against a plank of the barn’s side.

No sound comes from the screen but there’s a rushing off—somewhere. “What?” The sound ragged and low from his mouth, body tense as the demon rakes her hand up Dean’s face, runs the tip of her fingernail across his eyebrow. “What’s that sound? Water…”

“Know what I like most about martyred heroes, my boy?”

The film skips past meaningless scenes of flat cornfields in America’s heartland, aging Victorian mansions in tiny, Eastern seaboard towns, and swampy bayous backed up to middle income suburbs in the deep South.

The rushing far off in the distance picks up as if it’s flowing towards them.

“The way they take the pain, beautifully pathetic in their need to not fail the mission for whatever good they can convince themselves is worth their lives.” She whispers in his ear, one hand clamped on his head, nails dug into his scalp while the other finds the knitted patchwork of his chest, spears into his pecs, “The high of the accolades, the praise, they keep fighting until they become the enemy, the story’s antagonist.”

The screen shot pans out, two teenagers sparring amongst a rusted, filthy dirt yard backdrop. Husks of heated scrap metal around them as they tussle, roll and rage and laugh as an old dog bounces near them and growls above shaggy hair; the tow-headed teenager near throws up from a belly laugh as the dog’s slobber leaks in globs down its jowls and lands on the younger teen’s face.

The water gains its voice, tidal wave or a river that crests in volume. He struggles against his bindings until they snap, breaks free and his useless (ghost) limbs collapse beneath him. Muscles too weak to pick himself up.

The younger boy on the screen, eyes narrowed and breath coming in pants of anger, lurches up in a failed head-butt. The other, older, shakes and teases, hand in the kid’s hair to push himself up. Runs into a beat-down house as the image zooms out, shows miles of nothing but electrical power grids around the rural junkyard.

The demon kneels beside him, hands full of ash that she smears on Dean’s cheeks. “Aww, Dean, we were having so much fun. Oldies but goodies.”

He tries to break free from her, soul crumpling under her hands as her French tips spear his gut, her pupils blown from the slide of meat and intestine beneath her grip. “Now don’t be like that. I wanted to watch this with you.”

The boys on the screen are growing. Dean’s nineteen to his brother’s fifteen, and they’re fighting because Sam’s face is furious, chewing on a bite of sandwich like it’s wronged his existence. They’re eating lunch and having a pissing contest, Dean remembers how mad he could make his brother with an off-colored joke, hunkered down by a garbage dumpster outside a brick warehouse.

Dean’s gun in one hand, tuna fisted in the other.

He watches, heartbroken as his younger self wrenches away from Sam, kicks a hubcap as he goes, runs towards the parking lot as it zings off a rusted Chrysler. Watches as Sam threw down his food, his own weapon still tucked into his jean’s waistband, and that’s when the ghost-possessed clerk ran out of the store.

“Don’t turn away just yet, weepy eyes. D’aww, you’ll miss the best part. All that honor and glory of being a hero to so many people, you turned your back on that boy. No explanation, simply ran and that is just, _mmm_ , impressive.”

The angle of the image is above Dean’s fifteen year-old brother’s head, looking down as the clerk backhanded Sam so fast, he never had a chance to pull his knife. Sam’s head cracked on the filthy sidewalk curb, blood gushing as his eyes rolled back in his head.

“I didn’t mean to. It was an accident. I never…” Before he can utter the next, the demon cuts him off. She’s released him, midway in the valley between the screen and the sycamore, but Dean can see her as if she’s mere inches in front of him. His fresh wounds begin a sickening heal, blood coagulating with distinct slurps and skin that knits together loudly, like sewing stitches through leather and lard.

“Ah ah, hunter, I know what I see. You didn’t care that you left him that day. There were other instances too, right?”

On the screen, young Sam cries quietly, lying on his back in the dead of summer at their Uncle Bobby’s. The boy’s face morphs, different ages, each with Sam lying down, tears pooled in his eyes. Cold winter nights, when Dean and John left him alone to heal; cool spring days when the hunt was too much research, the past hunt’s gore and stench in his nostrils, and Dean left to find a bar, any. Drink, fuck it out, hustle until his pockets were lined and he had to wash bright red lipstick off his mouth and dick.

Sam standing in the shadows through the ages, both of them so full of rage and burning themselves out. Dean leaving, Sam running. Full speed ahead, forgetting each other in the aftermath until Dad went missing and a beautiful girl burnt up.

The screen’s image filters blue, Sam in bed, body a stiff presence with his hands tucked down by his sides. He’s older, Dean knows this. Knows this man, knows how this man’s breath smells in the morning, a first kiss the morning before Sam went missing. A promise to stop running, to burn out with the other in their bed.

This bed though, this bed is ridiculously neat, military corners crisp and the sheets pulled taut across his brother’s broad expanse of chest.

“I had a soul once,” a lilting sing-song, the demon shifts her eyes back and forth, “but I sold it down the ri-i-i-ver for my baby.”

Right as the image of Sam breaks away, there’s a flicker of a blues and reds and yellows.

“You burnt out. I brought you here because I like your stories. Like the Winchester style, like the way I give you everything you could never have wrapped up in a pretty, pretty world, and you’ll turn your back. What’s your mission, Dean?”

“Where’s Sam?” It’s growled out, Dean remembers _everything_.

The credits pop up though, times new roman font of everyone they’ve loved and lost in their lives. The word ‘starring’ in bold announces- It doesn’t. The screen blanks out, and immediately, the crossroads demon is snapping her fingers in his face.

He has no weapon, no power in the void she’s placed him—snagged him up, keeping him out of the pit’s clutches and gave him a different world. Broke him, as good as put him on the rack by giving him what he won’t ever get out of his head. Normal.

+

“Sam!”

Panic sets as adrenaline courses hard, gets him up, and he races towards the movie rig, muscles pumping hard.

“I’ll bring you right back, Dean. You can’t run away until I get what I deserve, the weapon I molded.” The demon melts into herself, lets him run until sand gives way to green lawns and gated communities.

Runs until there’s no more breath, until there’s the California coast and Halfmoon Bay, towards a prosthetic design on his kitchen countertop that will be the frontrunner in its field.

The buzzing reaches him as he trips over a tossed pink shirt. The sound intensifies, a staccato rhythm that he can’t place, and it cripples him. There’s no boy in his bed as he looks up through the canopy of a tree, the stars shining down as the buzzing noise explodes around him.

Dean screams and screams and…

+

Jared spreads his body out the full length of their couch. His feet touch the armrest at the end, but there’s still plenty of room and the cushions are firm with the right touch of give. He lifts his head to readjust, wants to see Dean blustering around the kitchen.

“Anna buy us all new furniture when I wasn’t paying attention?”

“What?” Dean’s moved to their balcony that overlooks the pool. They both prefer to eat outside on a thrift-store Rubbermaid table made for kids really.

Dean has his glass raised, the rim resting on the inside of his lip, hint of raspberry in the drop of wine on his tongue.

“I was asking when the new sofa and ottoman came in, and if Anna had anything to do with all this—modern streamline fashion we’re rocking now.”

“You don’t like it?”

“No, it’s good. Actually, I love it. Variety. The urban cowboy meets techie look was becoming mundane. You know me and fashion, my luvah.” He tries to maintain composure, but it’s useless. Dean’s look of confusion and mortification cracks him up, so Jared gets up and flounces through the condo on over to the balcony.

“Jesus, Sam. What’s gotten into you?”

Jared’s eyes instantly narrow, jerk of his chin at the name. Sets his mood on edge, so he grabs his wine glass off the rinky-dink table and walks as calmly as he can back in. Heads to the kitchen, to the wine bottle.

“There’s an explanation,” he hears from behind him. A shit ton of guilt lacing those words which is—it bears an explanation. Dean steps forward, and Jared stops him with a hand up and the bottle of merlot in the other.

“I’m not above knocking your ass out if the explanation isn’t a good one.” Before Dean can interrupt, and he tries, Jared sucks in his cheeks, licks his lower lip to center himself. “You call out that name.”

“What name?”

The bottle sails across the room, shatters on the fridge. Maroon liquid spills down the stainless steel. “The name, Dean. Sam. You’ve been saying it in your sleep, when you’re jerking off in the shower, called me it when we were in the grocery store two days ago. So, yeah, you better have a good fucking explanation.”

There’s no way to say it right, so he doesn’t try. Dean simply tells him about the dreams.

Jared’s tanned face is pale, stark under the kitchen’s lights. There’s a card in his hand, the phone to his ear as he talks in heaving sobs to a person who is supposed to come and take Dean. Dean can’t hear the rushing noise, so much as the bright light and buzzing increases.

The countertop cracks and Jared jerks back, stiff in Dean’s arms. Dean’s frightened, more so than he was when they were road-tripping and accidentally ran across a nest of vamps back in Santa Fe.

“I’m going to always love you, and no matter what, Jared—you’re mine. I want you happy, hear me?” There’s wetness everywhere, tears streaking Jared’s face as Dean grabs and pulls him forward, kisses him breathless as the phone tumbles to the floor. Drags him back into the living room. They trip and land on the floor, wool rug beneath Jared breaking his fall.

“Dean, baby, it’s going to be okay. They’re coming, and your team will be at the hospital. We’ll get it all worked out.” Jared is crying so hard his chest heaves, ugly sounds as he soothes his best friend now underneath him, head cradled in his hands. “Don’t pass out, man. Don’t make me punch you. Can’t leave me here alone, me and you. _Dean, wake up_!”

+

She’s on a navy blue sheet with pale blue stitching, sitting cross-legged and surrounded by a picnic basket and a hellhound with a Frisbee between its paws. Several sharp incisors shred the plastic so that it looks like an explosion of neon green confetti. Her hair splays naturally, kinky curls soft against her skin and framing a face he’s only seen once. It’s the third time she’s changed her meatsuit since the dreams began, this one younger than the rest.

  
“She was d.o.a, heart failure due to a faulty pacemaker. Found a thread, tugged, and she was kicked out—my new home. Twenty-one. Think I’ll keep her.”

  
The hellhound is at his crotch, snuffling and sneezing. He wants to shoo the thing away because it’s growling at his thigh, his abs, and Dean doesn’t want to be dog kibble again. Ever.

  
“C’mere girl,” and the demon clicks her tongue, straightens the glittery pink and silver collar around its neck as it head-butts her. Dean walks past her to the stream downhill, rests against a tree so that he can grab his ears at the thunder clap and whistle high pitch that’s starting in the west.

  
He’s known, known by the way he doesn’t remember his life before Jared, of how he dreams of Sam because Sam is too big a piece to not have in any world they throw him. He understands the lesson and that he was never supposed to have them both.

  
“I’ll always pick Sam, always. So I wanna know why, you pathetic piece of a relic! I want to know why you want me to choose? I know who you are! A coward, hiding out in the spaces and letting us do your dirty work.” He has to scream even though she’s in front of him, in the river. Hellhound whining as it steps in after her. Her vision shatters, shock white for a moment into a form that is littered with blackened veins, flame licking in her coal black eyes. The beast beside her sits with a gutted trout dangling from its muzzle, completely unaffected by the transformations.

  
“I brought you here,” the god’s voice rises, joins in the noise from the west and drowns it out, “gave you another world to save you from their filth, teach you. My winged children are looking for you. They’ve found a way in and they’ll paint the world with blood to find you.”

  
The god’s toes skim the surface of the water, spitting the words, “I want them leashed! Undeserving, spoiled brats. I need you both—you and your brother—need my weapons honed. Atoned.”

  
His knees sink into the riverbed, leeches to his jeans, and claws at his face. Her voice burns, melodies colliding discordant, acid tone of betrayal. The form shimmers, a young boy’s walking across the water to pat him on the head as Dean rips hair out. The chunk of gore falls into the water, swept under by the current. “Crazed. This is what we’re told is loving? Atoned for what?”

  
The man before him looks like Sammy, his Sam. Sam snaps, and the noise dissipates around him, a bubble, as Sam yanks him up off his knees and digs meaty fingers into Dean’s face to hold him still, keep from running. “Atoned for your sins. For running, running from each other. Make it right, make your choice worth it. If the world burns, it’ll do so on the heels of my weapons. No matter what, honor your choice.”

  
When the hellhound moves towards him, canines sharp and claws clicking across a white-capped river, Dean’s ready for the fall.

  
+

  
He makes Ruby within five seconds, recognizes the black smoke beneath her borrowed skin. Threatens to knife her before she takes another step, blinks black coal right back at her when she looks to a stunned Sam for help. Dean exerts his newfound strength, physically removing her from his vicinity and throwing her out the motel door.

  
“Pack your bags, Sammy.” Dean fists a hand in Sam’s wet hair, playing on his brother’s shock, and attacks his mouth, hard bite of a kiss.

  
They travel two states over, find a model home to break into for the night. “I tried everything, Dean. Everything. No one would…and Ruby was the only one who would talk to me.” Sam apologizes for a week. Gives into his brother’s advances in jerks and fits, too low on demon blood to fight back. He yells, berates his decision the following weeks. Dean won’t bleed his eyes black anymore, won’t feed him blood, and won’t allow him out of his sight so that calling Ruby isn’t an option.

  
He ignores the food and water his big brother buys, curls into himself as he shakes apart. Addiction settled in his bones, he’s useless on hunts, can’t manage the energy required to pull Dean from a selkie’s grip so that Dean works overtime keeping himself alive. Tries to mangle the first demon they run across, case in Oklahoma where the omens are out of control.

  
Dean finds the grey-haired janitor limp in Sam’s arms, whir of the boiler room behind and seated against a grouping of copper pipes. The room is clean, the demon lax and smiling under an almost bite. “Don’t you fucking dare, Sam.” At Sam’s returning stare, a challenge, Dean shows him.

  
He rushes forward, lets loose the power she gave him for special occasions just like this, rips the bastard out of Sam’s arms so fast there’s a snap of a joint misplaced. He puts his hand on the meatsuit’s head and bleeds his eyes white, holy fire flickering. Repeats the Enochian that won’t stop rattling around in his brain until the meatsuit sparks, demon dying and leaving the janitor worse for wear.

  
+

  
When Sam goes for four days without vomiting, he crawls into bed and won’t come out. Swats Dean away. By the next Saturday, the room they’re renting stinks of unwashed body. Sam eats an entire Styrofoam container full of chef salad, ten soft breadsticks he dips into olive oil, and downs a gallon of spring water. Dean watches the feast with a deep-set scowl on his face, looking between his brother and the tabs he’s organizing on the Detroit webpage he has open.

  
“Want me to go shoot a head of cabbage? Some carrots to tide you over for the long haul, Bugs?”

  
“Eat me, Dean.” Sam belches, pats the table at the burn of food finally in his belly.

  
“Not until you take a shower. You fucking reek, Sam.” Sam’s eyes are popped wide as he takes that in, then tosses the container towards the trash and misses. "You think just because I refuse to molest you, you and me,” Dean waves a pencil back and forth between them, “we’re not on? I need you stable.”

  
He’s prepared for a lot, even the chair Sam picks up and smashes against the wall behind Dean. “Then let me! You sport your powers like a fifteen year old with a hard-on, but you won’t let me? What the hell, Dean?” He yells so loud the veins in his neck stand out in stark clarity.

  
Dean’s even prepared for the begging that follows, Sam’s shoulders wedging into the space between his thighs. Sam’s hands on the armrests of the desk chair and trembling as he goes to unzip Dean’s fly. Dean expects it, doesn’t think any less of his brother’s actions. “I’m sorry, Sam. Not this way.” The punch is clean, doesn’t break anything as Sam falls, splayed out on the floor.

  
+

  
They’re popping large hushpuppies into their mouths, eating at a fish shack on the Gulf Coast. The air is sticky, both their t-shirts glued to their fronts as they watch people drive by on the beach road. Sam wipes his hands off, crumbs immediately zeroed in on by the seagulls. The strip of beach is a twenty-six mile stretch, the water a murky brown thanks to the silt and brine trapped by the Barrier Islands a few miles off the coast.

  
The tone of their relationship has changed: Dean backs off substantially, gives Sam free reign in decisions with cases, doesn’t blink an eye when Sam goes out at night by himself—they both know Dean will smell whatever Sam decides is okay to put in his body. Demon blood, alcohol, drugs, remnants of a jerk-off session with a stranger. Any of those coping mechanisms to take away the pain, and he shuns them all. It’s the gauntlet, and Dean can see the beginnings of curiosity take root inside his brother.

  
Dean helps him through, counsels, sits back and actually enjoys himself. Gives a wide berth and watches as Sam’s independence is tested on a week out in the desert alone. He finds Dean and sheds the need to run, replacing it with long bouts of walking in Dean’s shadow.

  
“I found her—him—by the way. Or, it found me. Kept me out of the pit. Gave me the dual whammy.” Dean stuffs his face full of fried pickles, greasy fingers tapping on a napkin.  
Sam doesn’t even ask, turns enough on the hood of the Impala to squint at him, raise an eyebrow in question.

  
Dean tells him. About the god. God. Someone’s, his mom’s and dad’s for sure, and it doesn’t sit well with Sam either. He jumps off and walks to the shore, bare feet digging into the sugar sand.

  
+

  
Dean’s back six months when Sam looks clean enough to spill the why’s: Why he couldn’t bleed for him, why he’s not looked at another body since he’s been back, why the alcohol only comes out when he and Sam are alone anymore.

  
He’s straddling Sam’s waist, rutting, “Had to make sure this was okay. This was what you wanted and not something the blood made you think you needed.”

  
Sam fucks into him, stars and the universe melting in their veins when they cum, one a few seconds behind the other. Sam takes Dean twice more. During the middle of the night, in the shower, Dean ass up and hands on his knees. Then the next morning. Presses his brother’s body into the bed—chest to chest, slow grind because Sam refuses to pull out in strokes, doesn’t allow Dean to cum until he’s literally crying for the relief.

  
+

  
“I get it.”

  
They’re in a grave, in a store five miles from that, in Bobby’s house eating stew and drinking moonshine. Their talks last five minutes to a whooping two hours one time, and that’s the time Dean wanted to bash his own head in because someone (him) may have said the love word while cleaning guns.

  
Dean bleeds for him on a Saturday after they swam in a swanky motel pool full of tourists and their kids, ate at the five-star restaurant. Dean thinks it’s fitting that Sam has remained remarkably calm up until he smears his stuck finger in Sam’s mouth. Thinks it fitting that instead of becoming addicted, Dean’s blood centers him.

  
There’s never a feast of it, neither of them are power hungry. It sits beneath the surface, nuclear. They burn with it, let it smolder without abuse, and they wait.

  
+

  
“You miss him?” Sam rests his head against the passenger window, hair making tiny lines on the fogged glass.

“Every day.”

“This okay, though? You said she gave you a choice. So, uh...” Sam’s heart may break from the way he shuts down the thought and takes his eyes off Dean, and that’ll break Dean’s.

“Yeah, Sam. Jesus, yeah.” The sign for Detroit shines in their headlights. “She gave me a choice, so I picked home. I picked you. Us, right?”  
He snakes a hand out, wraps it around Sam’s neck to pull him closer. Sam scoots across the bench seat, leans back into the light massage, and settles in.


End file.
